Why, exactly, is the World Economic Forum so popular and unpopular at the same time?

Here is a question few people ask: why is the World Economic Forum in Davos so popular? I ask the question as I set off to the forum to have cocktails in the snow with my peeps (not), the 0.1% of the 1%, this weekend.

Allow me to tell you how that feels… It feels weird. There are few less-meritorious participants in the forum than I. Far from luxuriating in limousines, I feel physically ill when I see the amount I have to pay to fill up my car. I do not have a private jet at my disposal, and my idea of a luxury flight is a window seat in cattle with not too many stopovers.

Yet I have to admit, I love going to the forum. (This will be my fourth visit to Davos). The variety and intensity of the discussions feed your curiosity in unexpected and gratifying ways, and their international character can transport you out of the cloistered world of South Africa’s endless morass of problems and dilemmas.

It’s an uninterrupted feast of ideas: more than 500 discussion forums considering topics. You don’t have to agree with everything, but it is fun to have the ideas wash over you.

To me, it is curious that so few journalists admit to enjoying the forum, particularly because there is obviously a scrum to get invited and thousands arrive every year.

Many brand themselves as vociferous forum critics and make a great show of being righteously indignant at the idea of lots of rich people talking shop.

Read in Daily Maverick: “How the mighty have fallen — Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk and the Icarus effect”

But my feeling is, you know, grow up. Rich people are influential; they always have been, they always will be. Some are even influential because they should be influential, because they are successful.

Unmasking the ‘Davos Man’

Recently, Peter Goodman, the global economics correspondent of The New York Times, wrote a book titled Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World. 

A review in the Financial Times describes its contents as 400 pages of that above-mentioned righteous indignation at contemporary capitalism – from price gouging to anticompetitive behaviour and cosy corporate lobbying to the failure of trickle-down economics, the rise of international tax avoidance, growing inequality and the pain of public-sector austerity.

Frankly, I’m mostly with him on all that stuff, but here is the catch: it turns out Goodman is a regular at Davos. I mean, what? If he despises Davos so much, why keep attending? A spy in the house, perhaps? Still, you would think it would just be too much to ask a person of his delicate sensibilities to demean his moral code by attending such a despicable function. But attend he did, year after year.

The Financial Times review concludes that the book takes itself too seriously: “Davos may have failed to deliver a kinder form of capitalism, but its role in fostering the uglier current alternative is more modest than Goodman suggests,” reviewer Andrew Jack concludes.

Faint praise indeed, but oddly, the FT itself often falls into the same trap: desperate to disassociate itself from the tawdry unlikability of the global elite, it takes regular potshots at the forum, while at the same time sending a fleet of its most senior journalists to cover the event. 

The FT review itself is a good example. The review criticises the book for its overreach, but along the way, it suggests WEF has “failed to deliver a kinder form of capitalism”.

Really? The WEF is responsible for that? A networking event? Personally, I have no doubt the WEF has done precisely the opposite: it has encouraged business people to think more carefully about the social and environmental questions they confront. 

But anyway, leaving the arguments aside, the facts are in and these are:

• The forum is wildly successful, and no event demonstrates that more explicitly than the one starting today (Monday, 16 January);


• A record number of participants (about 3,000) are taking part this year, alongside a record number of heads of state (52) and a record number of finance ministers (59) along with 19 central bank governors and 40 trade ministers;


• And, it must be said, at least 100 billionaires will attend, among the ranks of the 600 CEOs attending.